Lancashire and South Cumbria to receive multi-million pound social care investment to ease NHS winter pressures

Lancashire, Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen and Cumbria will receive a combined £9,693,475 as part of a programme to help local authorities alleviate winter pressures on the NHS, getting patients home quicker and freeing up hospital beds across England.

The extra funding, part of a £240 million fund announced by Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock earlier this month, is aimed at reducing delayed transfers of care and could pay for the following:

The North West of England will receive £35,692,898 in total.

Councils have been allocated the funding based on the adult social care relative needs formula and letters have been sent out today to inform them.

The health and care system has already been working hard to ensure patients return home from hospital once their treatment has finished and delays attributable to adult social care have been reduced by 39% across England since February last year.

Dr Amanda Doyle, GP and Chief Officer for Healthier Lancashire and South Cumbria said:

“This additional investment for social care will help to get patients home quicker and free up beds across our hospitals in Lancashire and South Cumbria. This much needed additional resource will support the partnership work across the region, help to enable the 1.7 million people in Lancashire and South Cumbria to be supported better at home and will help to alleviate pressure on the NHS.”

Breakdown of local authority funding

Blackburn with Darwen: £764,416

Blackpool: £903,685

Lancashire: £5,518,152

Cumbria: £2,507,222

Health and Social Care Secretary, Matt Hancock said:

“I want to help the NHS through this winter.

“I have already provided funding for hospitals to make upgrades to their buildings to deal with pressures this winter, and I am making an extra £240 million available to councils to pay for social care packages this winter to support our NHS.

“We will use this money to help people who don’t need to be in hospital, but do need care, to get back home, into their communities, so we can then free up those vital hospital beds, and help more people get the hospital care they need.”

This latest injection of funding builds on previous support the government has already given this year to the NHS ahead of this winter. In September, the NHS received up to £145million for trusts across the county to boost winter resilience, which will go toward upgrading wards, redeveloping A&E departments, and pay for an extra 900 beds.

And a total of £36.3million was awarded to ambulance trusts in June to prepare for this winter, and will go towards buying 256 new state-of-the-art ambulances.

As announced in last year’s budget, an additional £1.6bn has been given to the health service for 2018/19, and this investment will be used by the NHS to treat a quarter of a million more patients in A&E and for improve A&E performance.

Aside from funding, NHS leaders have also announced an ambition for 100% of frontline workers to get the flu jab to protect patients as part of a comprehensive plan for this winter.

For the first time, children in school year 5 will be offered the flu vaccine, meaning as a result, all children aged between 2 and 9 will be offered the flu vaccine.

Other actions being implemented to boost support over the winter period include: